Thursday, 20 October 2016

Ten Keralites returned after undergoing IS training

Ten Keralites returned after undergoing IS training

Kochi: The National Investigation
Agency (NIA) has confirmed that ten Malayalee youngsters who had
undergone combat training at Jihadist camps in Iraq and Syria, have
returned to Kerala during the past one year.

The central agency received vital information regarding their
involvement in terror-related activities during the interrogation of
Subahani Haja Moideen, who allegedly radicalized and recruited several
Malayalees to ISIS.

Intelligence agencies were aware of the network which aimed to
indoctrinate and recruit Keralites to the terror organization, but until
the arrest of Subahani, they had no information about their return to
India after undergoing training in the conflict zones of Syria and Iraq.

Subahani, who is currently being interrogated by the NIA, revealed
that he and several youngsters from India, including the ten Keralites,
were part of a terror gang which was assigned to take on armed forces in
the Iraqi city of Mosul.

The Islamic State which took over Mosul after the fall of the Saddam
Hussein regime, went on a drive to recruit youth from India and other
south Asian countries when Iraqi forces launched a fresh military
operation to recapture the key town north of Baghdad from them.

Subahani, who returned to India last year, revealed to the
interrogators that the youth were forced to flee Mosul after security
forces intensified operations to retake the city.
However, NIA received substantial evidence to prove that they had
returned to India much before Iraqi and Kurdish forces inflicted heavy
losses on terror outfits operating in Mosul.
It is assumed that the youth were recruited and given arms training
as part of the IS’s propaganda to spread its activities in South Asia.

There are reports that former members of the embattled Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its sympathizers have also been
recruited by the ISIS in the recent times.
The intelligence agencies, which could not ascertain the exact reason
for Malayalee youths opting to join the ISIS, said that most of the
recruits from Kerala live outside the state after returning from Syria
or Iraq and they continue to maintain no contact with their family
members back home.